


Dutiful

by intheheart



Series: Nirwen Lavellan [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4834727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intheheart/pseuds/intheheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another story from (my Inquisitor) Nirwen Lavellan's past, with her first love, Nehnariel.</p><p>Raised among the Dalish, Nirwen is bisexual, and her relationship with her training partner and friend Nehn, both 16, has turned into something much deeper over the past two months. While talking to her mother, she realizes doubts about her future as a dutiful member of her clan if she wants to love freely.</p><p>Translations of brief uses of elven at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dutiful

It was supposed to be a day of rest, but the morning rain had delayed drying the skins. With new ones set to be processed, they had to take advantage of the afternoon sun. Nirwen offered to help her mother stretch all the freshly tanned skins onto the drying racks to make up for time lost.

After the last skin hung in the strong sun, Etharla sighed.“I need some water. One more thing to help me today?” Nirwen nodded and opened a filled waterskin, taking a small wooden cup into her palm.“We are so fortunate to have this blessing, though I don't remember being this tired with your sister,” her mother laughed as she sat on the carved bench. “Our lives, for our people's burdens and journeys, these are the things that keep us forward driven.”

She smiled at her eldest daughter, pride in her green eyes, her hands coming to rest on her already rounded belly. “With so long in between my babes, one will be already grown after this little one arrives. And may be on the way to her own children soon after this one learns to walk.” She rubbed, emphasizing her happy expectations.

Nirwen felt herself smile as her stomach dropped upon her mother's words, a sudden detachment from her own facial expression felt strange. Nehn's eyes, bright in last night's moonlight flashed in her mind. She handed her mother the cup of cool water and turned to go, her deliberate pace not betraying the blur of her thoughts. She caught her own breath, and waited until she was clear past some trees to permit several hot tears to slip down her cheeks.

Before the fire the night before, goats crackled upon several spits, a group around each, awaiting the meal ahead. Nirwen enjoyed the weight in her arms after the day's hunt. Stretching her legs out before her, she leaned back, hands out behind and to either side, feeling the muscles tense; light soreness momentarily to the forefront. Elathyn ran around the camp in the distance, eyes wide and tongue out, daring a boy to catch her. There would be relative freedom the following day, with only training scheduled for the morning.

The air shifted as Nehn suddenly sat beside her, stretching her legs out similarly, but crossing one over the other, ankle shifting idly. She gently bumped Nirwen with an elbow and smiled. “Did you miss me, lethallan?” Heat rose in Nirwen's face. Terms of familiarity exchanged, the same as always, voices solid, revealing nothing, but on Nehn's tongue, and Nirwen's both, unspoken whispers of a warmer kind.

Inches away, yet the field of eyes surrounding them acted like sentinels. Nehn's hair, loose about her shoulders this night, would smell of grass and oils. Their brief respite that afternoon did not serve to ease the ache before the communal cookfire. Nirwen saw her father arrive and join her mother, who had successfully tamed Ela for the moment. The little boy frowned, but seemed relieved at the end of Ela's repeated victories. Pride in her little sister made Nirwen laugh in spite of herself. Keeper Deshanna spoke of their upcoming journey to a new place. This night always excited Nirwen. A new adventure, new places, the chance to see more of what felt like a world of contradictory vastness and smallness. Fingers slid toward her own right hand, meeting loosely at the tips in the shadowed space between them. Nehn gazed ahead at the fire, but caressed Nirwen's fingers lazily, in no particular rhythm, a comfort nonetheless in the shadow between them.

At that moment, clan, family, and everything she had ever known around her, Nirwen realized what was different. This time, the journey ahead that had always excited her was not an external one.

_Sylaise has blessed our home and hearth. Our people. Mythal protect us all. I know of these blessings. Why do I selfishly ask for more?_

She turned the thoughts over in her mind as she sat beneath the tree she had come to love the most here, its fat trunk enough to slip behind and remain unnoticed when it became necessary. She would have to find a new place once they all moved camp. Family, and work, and their way of life. That was what they had. That was what she could count upon. How could she be so selfish as to set aside that piece, a piece of the world, of herself, that was filled solely by her and Nehn? To want for herself. Her mother's happiness that afternoon felt like what she imagined one of Nehn's precise arrows striking a beating heart was like; a correction, jarring her toward the path before her once more. _There is no room for this...this...._

More tears spilled onto her face, burning her eyes and cleaning the sticky tracks that had remained.

“Nirwen?”

Her name on Nehn's tongue tore at her and lifted her, resulting in a momentary paralysis. She knew Nehn approached, but suddenly, Nirwen wished she hadn't shown her this tree, didn't know where to find her, didn't possess such _intuition_ when it came to her. It would make it easier on them both. She wiped at her flushed face with a forearm.

Nehn knelt, brushing the hair out of Nirwen's face, and kissed her forehead, before sitting down next to her and taking her hand.

“Your mother said she hadn't seen you in hours, since you walked off. I thought you might be here. I didn't tell anyone, I promise.” Nehn's graceful, calloused brown fingers cradled her own hand, gently, firmly, willingly. It hurt almost more than it helped.

The question, the very words, bones that threatened to break, bringing down the dream of the past two months, they rushed out before they could be held back.

“Nehn, what are we _doing_?” Her fingers tightened over Nehn's. “Are just making fools of ourselves?” Nehn pulled Nirwen close.

“Ma emma lath, Nirwen.” Her lavender eyes bright even when tear-reddened, Nirwen exhaled deeply. Nehn felt her body slacken.

She sat up, meeting Nehn's brown eyes. Nehn returned her gaze, then kissed her neck softly, beginning behind the ear. Nirwen turned, She had wanted, oh she wanted, but doubts had held her back. Their kisses seemed to say more than words needed to.

“I love you, Nehnariel,” she responded hoarsely, failing to stifle a new sob that shook her momentarily.

“Mother, she spoke of growing up, of dutifully adding babes to the clan. Of their unexpected blessing. But we...can we truly do this? Can we be this....selfish?”

“Maybe it is selfish. Maybe it is not. I don't feel selfish, not when we're out there and I pray for guidance that my arrow fly accurately. You're always in close, Nirwen, and if anything would happen,” she paused, “it feels larger than me. _We_ feel larger than me.” Nirwen smiled for the first time since they had reunited.

“I feel the same, but we have been so careful, so secret. Would they send one of us to another clan if they found out? Losing you scares me too. I never knew just how much. I don't know what to do. But I know what I want. Emm'asha.”

Nehn closed her eyes and flashed her own warm smile. The way her nose crinkled slightly, and only with certain expressions, was irresistible. Nirwen gently traced Nehn's lips with a fingertip, following with the kiss both anticipated, and along with it, a sense of possibility, if they remained united.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ma emma lath = "You are my love" - a way of saying I love you.  
> Emm'asha = my girl


End file.
